New Hampshire commercial electricity market

Four suppliers of record, and five towns where there is none

The first fact in New Hampshire is territorial. Eversource NH, the company still tariffed as Public Service Company of New Hampshire, states that its New Hampshire service territory covers 206 towns, which takes in Manchester, Nashua, Keene, Laconia, Berlin and Portsmouth. Unitil's New Hampshire electric territory is the Concord area plus the southeastern and Seacoast towns, and its own service-area list names Allenstown, Bow, Concord, Derry, Epping, Exeter, Greenland, Hampstead, Hampton, Hampton Falls, Kensington, Kingston, Loudon, Newton, North Hampton, Pembroke, Plaistow, Salisbury, Seabrook, Stratham and Webster among them. Liberty Utilities completes the investor-owned set — the Community Power Coalition's customer material names Eversource, Unitil, Liberty Utilities and the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative as the four utilities whose supply charge a community power programme replaces — and the co-operative supplies its members as a member-owned business rather than as an investor-owned utility. Five municipalities run their own electric departments, and the American Public Power Association's state listing names them: Ashland, Littleton Water and Light, the New Hampton Village Precinct, the Town of Wolfeboro and Woodsville. An address inside one of those five systems has no supplier market to shop, no matter what the statute says about the rest of the state.

• Eversource NH serves 206 New Hampshire towns, including Manchester, Nashua, Keene, Laconia, Berlin and Portsmouth.
• Unitil's New Hampshire electric territory is Concord and the Seacoast, with roughly three dozen named towns.
• Liberty Utilities is the third investor-owned name in the state's electric market; its New Hampshire gas tariff covers the Merrimack Valley corridor.
• The New Hampshire Electric Cooperative supplies members as a co-operative.
• Ashland, Littleton, New Hampton, Wolfeboro and Woodsville run municipal electric departments, where no competitive supply exists at all.

Three supply arrangements, and the tariff names all three

New Hampshire unbundled generation from delivery, and the Eversource NH delivery tariff defines the three ways a commercial account can be supplied. Default Energy Service is electric energy, capacity and ancillary services provided by the company itself. Supplier Service is supply taken from a competitive supplier of the customer's choosing. Self-Supply Service is energy and capacity purchased directly from the Independent System Operator of New England or the New England Power Pool, which is the route open to a large load with its own market arrangements. Default Energy Service Rate DE is available only to customers who are not receiving Supplier Service or Self-Supply Service, and the tariff adds that no discount is applied to that rate under any side agreement. Reading those three definitions does most of the work of understanding a New Hampshire bill: transmission and distribution are always the utility's, and only the supply block moves when a business contracts with a supplier.

• Default Energy Service is the utility's own supply of energy, capacity and ancillary services.
• Supplier Service is supply from a competitive supplier; Self-Supply Service is energy and capacity bought directly from ISO New England.
• Rate DE is available only to customers not receiving Supplier Service or Self-Supply Service, and carries no discount.
• Delivery, metering and outage response stay with the distribution utility in every case.

The default rate is published on a calendar, and by class

The structure of Default Energy Service Rate DE says something a business cannot see from a marketing quote. For accounts on the larger delivery classes, the tariff prints a month-by-month schedule of default supply rates across a six-month window; for every other class it prints a single rate covering the same window. Each figure is built from the same four components: a base rate, a renewable portfolio standard adjustment, an administrative and general component, and a reconciliation adjustment that trues up what was collected against what was actually spent. Two consequences follow for a buyer. A supplier offer should be compared against the same months it would cover, because a winter month and a shoulder month on that schedule are not the same product. And an offer that bundles capacity, the renewables adjustment and the reconciliation treatment into a single number is not directly comparable with the default rate, which shows them separately. Ask for the week-by-week or month-by-month price of the product on offer, then line it up against the published default for the same period. The restructuring itself is defined in the same tariff: the 2015 Public Service Company of New Hampshire Restructuring and Rate Stabilization Agreement, approved by the Commission, which is why a Stranded Cost Recovery Charge still appears on delivery bills and is allocated across classes under the settlement.

• The default rate is a published schedule: month by month for the large-service classes, a single rate for the others.
• Components are base rate, renewable portfolio standard adjustment, administrative and general, and a reconciliation adjustment.
• Compare like for like: the same months, the same treatment of capacity and reconciliation.
• The 2015 PSNH Restructuring and Rate Stabilization Agreement sits behind the Stranded Cost Recovery Charge on delivery bills.

The switch clock is the meter read date

New Hampshire does not run the switch on a calendar of its own; it runs it on the meter read. The delivery tariff provides that Supplier Service from the supplier of record terminates on the next meter read date, provided the company has received either a valid "Supplier Drops Customer" notice from that supplier or a valid Electronic Enrollment from a new supplier at least two business days before the regularly scheduled meter read. That is the practical answer to the question of how long a switch takes: it completes at the read, and the paperwork has to be in ahead of it. Two protections are worth knowing. If a customer's Supplier Service ends for any reason, the company arranges Default Service, so a business is never left without supply on the day a supplier stops serving it. And because a competitive arrangement replaces only the supply block, the meter, the delivery tariff, the account number and the outage contact all stay where they were.

• A supplier switch completes on the next meter read date, not on a fixed calendar day.
• The utility needs a Supplier Drops Customer notice or an Electronic Enrollment at least two business days before the scheduled read.
• If Supplier Service ends for any reason, the utility arranges Default Service rather than leaving the account unsupplied.
• The account number, meter, delivery tariff and outage contact do not change.

Community power is already the incumbent across much of the state

New Hampshire's aggregation statute, RSA 53-E, lets a city, town or county aggregate the retail electric customers inside its boundaries, expressly including those who do not opt out, and it allows those agreements to be made by a group of municipalities acting jointly under RSA 53-A. That is exactly the structure the Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire used: a non-profit joint powers agency incorporated on 1 October 2021, organised by staff and officials from Lebanon, Hanover, Nashua, Harrisville and Cheshire County, which reported sixty-four municipal members and four county members as of May 2025. The Coalition's own customer material describes the division of labour plainly — the programme replaces the supply charge from the utility, whether that utility is Eversource, Unitil, Liberty Utilities or the New Hampshire Electric Cooperative, and the utility continues to charge for transmission and delivery. Enrolment is by notice and opt-out, and a community may adopt a local rate that carries a small additional charge per kilowatt-hour, kept in a local fund. The operational detail that matters most to a business is the refresh: a new account at a premises lands on utility supply unless the occupant acts, so the Coalition sends notices at least thirty days before automatically enrolling new customers, does not automatically enrol accounts that already hold a third-party contract or have net metering, and does not re-enrol anyone who previously opted out. In a member town, therefore, the number a supplier has to beat is usually the Coalition's rate rather than the utility default, and opting out is a decision a business makes deliberately rather than by staying silent.

• RSA 53-E allows opt-out aggregation by a municipality or county, and joint action by a group of them under RSA 53-A.
• The Community Power Coalition of New Hampshire incorporated as a non-profit joint powers agency on 1 October 2021; it reported 64 municipal and 4 county members as of May 2025.
• A community power programme replaces the utility supply charge; transmission and delivery stay with the utility.
• Notices to new accounts go out at least 30 days before automatic enrolment; accounts with existing third-party contracts or net metering are not auto-enrolled, and prior opt-outs are not re-enrolled.
• A community may adopt a local rate carrying a small per-kilowatt-hour adder that stays with the town.

Winter, the capacity zone, and what to ask about in an offer

New Hampshire sits in ISO New England's Northern New England capacity zone, which covers New Hampshire, Vermont and part of Maine; in the capacity auction filings, Maine is modelled as an export-constrained zone nested inside it. Capacity zones exist where the transmission system binds, and New England's binding constraint is the winter delivery of fuel to generators, which is why capacity in the region is bought three years ahead in the Forward Capacity Market. A New Hampshire contract inherits that shape. For a site whose load is winter-heavy — electric heat, snow-melt, a cold-storage or process load that runs hardest when the mercury drops — the exposure is concentrated in the months the contract's strips actually cover, and a summer-weighted energy price can look attractive while the expensive season is priced somewhere else. Three questions settle most of it: does the offer fix, bundle or pass through the ISO capacity charge and its credits; which months of the default schedule does it compete against; and what happens to the price if the account clears its contract quantity or falls short of it.

• New Hampshire is in the Northern New England capacity zone, which also covers Vermont and part of Maine.
• Maine is modelled as an export-constrained zone nested inside Northern New England.
• Capacity is bought three years ahead in ISO New England's Forward Capacity Market.
• Ask how an offer treats ISO capacity charges and credits: fixed, bundled or passed through.
• For a winter-heavy site, check that the months the contract prices include the months the load peaks.

What to gather before a New Hampshire quote

One eligibility caveat applies to every energy page on this site: competitive supply depends on the service address, the meter and the utility territory, and municipal utilities, co-operatives and some jurisdictions have no choice at all. New Hampshire contains both cases within a single state line, so the territory check comes before the procurement conversation. HighGround may receive compensation from providers on completed purchases, and an enquiry places no order and switches no supplier: nothing moves until a contract is signed, and the supplier serving the account keeps serving it until a switch completes at a meter read. The file that makes a New Hampshire enquiry answerable is short, and the first item on it decides the rest: the delivering utility, which settles territory, class and default arrangement in one step.

• Twelve months of bills from the delivering utility, with the supply block separated from delivery, transmission and the stranded cost recovery charge.
• The delivery rate class on the account and whether it is a general, primary general or large general class.
• Whether the town runs a community power programme, and any notice the account has received from it.
• Interval data for demand-metered accounts, and the winter peak for a winter-heavy site.
• Whether the site has on-site generation that puts it on a backup delivery class.
• Eligibility for competitive supply is decided by the address, the meter and the utility territory; municipal departments, the co-operative and some jurisdictions have no choice.
• HighGround may be compensated on completed purchases; an enquiry orders nothing and switches nothing.

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